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Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Matt at New York Comic Con 2015: Friday

Well, my day doesn't have the best of starts, but it also doesn't have worst. I wake up bright and early, get showered and dressed, and make it to the train station just in time to see the first train of the morning pull off. I just haaaaaaad to take that extra 3 seconds putting on my socks, didn't I? Then to make matters even better, my 6:30 train is 10 minutes late, giving more time to the early birds to line up ahead of me. I finally get to New York and what a beautiful place every single time. I swear, I'll never get tired of seeing this city, no matter how many times I come here. I catch a cab and book it to the Jacob Javitz Center and there's already a short line of people. A friend of mine who actually caught that 6 AM train is part of the first hundred in line, which just kind of adds salt to the wound, but the line isn't much longer. My spot in line is about three blocks away, or wrapped around the same block 3 times. It's now about 7:30 and the wait begins. Got my headphones in, got some good comics to read, the time goes by like nothing. Next thing I know, its roughly 10 AM and we're being allowed to hit the showroom floor.

I've got a panel to line up for, so luckily I don't have to cram onto the escalator and I can just sneak on by to my panel which is in the basement, where we all line up anyway. The panel is called Star Wars: A Galaxy of Fandom. The panel was made up of some creators across different mediums involving Star Wars. We had some comic writers, artists, a novelist, and one of the head guys at Wookiepedia. Most of the panel was a Q&A between the head of the panel and the panel themselves. But the questions were fun, they were all about What If's and What Would You Do's. We learned why Star Wars means so much to some people and our first exposures to Star Wars. A fun part of the panel was the section where the crowd and the panel would vote on who would win in fights. First up was Obi-Wan Kenobi vs Boba Fett and this was a no brainer. Winner was Obi-Wan, hands down. Next up was Chewie and Zeb from the new tv show Star Wars Rebels. We all decided that would be a thumb war and could go either way. We also learned a fun fact about Chewie and Zeb. The original design for Chewie was scrapped and wouldn't be seen again for almost 40 years when it became the design for Zeb in the kids tv show. The more you know! Alien vs alien, Ewoks vs Jabba's little rat creature thing and dead X-Wing pilots vs the one that actually survived all three movies, Wedge. It was all good and fun with many laughs until the final battle which was R2-D2 vs the new comedic relief droid, BB-8. Everyone agreed, you don't mess with the originals.

The next panel was called Marvel: Iron Man and the Avengers and if you haven't figured it out by now, this panel is going to be about Iron Man and the Avengers. Off the bat, they let us know they want to make Iron Man in the comics as big a character as he is in the films. They had no problem reminding us he is the driving force of the movies and they want to mimic that in their pages. To do this, they showed us some incredible work from the upcoming Iron Man issue 2 featuring the Hulkbuster suit in action. They followed this up with other titles, first being Ant-Man giving us a preview of some art from the first two issues of that. Then they announced the creative team behind Daredevil for the last couple years is moving to a Black Widow book. Now she's a character I normally don't go crazy for, but if Mark Waid is writing it, what can go wrong, right? Greg Pak was there to talk about his return to the Hulk but not with Bruce Banner. Now the Hulk is going to be the child prodigy with no self control, Amadeus Cho, The Totally Awesome Hulk. Shout out to Marvel for finally giving me a reason to drop this book! Next up was the new Angela, Queen of Hel book. Now sure how that's gonna go, but she's apparently leaving the Guardians and going under ground below Asgard. This could be interesting for the Hot Topic kids out there. Uncanny Avengers gets a new creative team in Gerry Duggan and Ryan Stegman. Cap has put together a new unification team of heroes, mutants, and even inhumans. Even Deadpool got a spot. Shit, if he can do it, anyone can. Speaking of Deadpool, they showed off some pages from his new upcoming series and they announced a brand new series for a long gone characters Black Knight. The New Avengers gets some showtime too with interior art and covers shown but the big 'oooooo' moment was when they showed the cover of the All New All Different Avengers #4. It showed Lady Thor getting hot and heavy with Sam Wilson, the new Captain America. Also, this year marks the 75th anniversary of Captain America and Marvel plans on celebrating it correctly. They're gonna be doing a mini crossover event that spans a couple different Avengers titles all focusing on a small situation in middle America. They said they don't want this to be a big deal like most other events have been, involving so many different teams and people. They want to try and keep this small and as Avengers based as possible and all I can say is, I'm ready for it!

The rest of the day was spent on the show floor, checking out vendors, cosplay, the Marvel booth, Image, the tower of t-shirts. Its nothing we haven't seen before. Marvel had a demo of their upcoming Lego Avengers game, Capcom was present and showing off Street Fighter 5. No Ubisoft this year, surprisingly. The one thing I didn't like about this Friday was there was WAY too many damn people. Walking around was by far the hardest its ever been for me at any New York Comic Con. I still made my panels on time, I didn't miss out on anything, but getting around was tough. The rain at the end of the day didn't make the walk to New York Penn any better. Apparently there were shuttles going back and forth, yeah okay. Hopefully Saturday will be better, right?